Computer graphics technology has come a long way since video games were first developed. Relatively inexpensive 3D graphics engines now provide nearly photo-realistic interactive game play on home video game and personal computer hardware platforms costing only a few hundred dollars.
Most game players demand great graphics, but the core of video game play is the game/user interface—the interaction between the (human) game player and the gaming platform. Video games are fun and exciting to play because the game player can interact with the game and affect or control the gaming events and outcomes. Since the essence of an enjoyable video game play experience relates to the way the user interacts with the game and the game playing system, user input details tend to be important to the success and marketability of home video game play systems.
One aspect of the video game/user interface relates to how the user controls the position of one or more objects on the display. Much work has been done on this user interface aspect in the past. For example, the first Magnavox Odyssey home video game systems provided detachable handheld controllers with knobs that allowed the game player to control the horizontal and vertical positioning of objects on the screen. Pong®, another early home video game system, had a very simple user interface providing controls the players manipulated to control the positioning of paddles on the screen. Nintendo's Game and Watch® early handheld video game systems used a “cross-switch” as described in Nintendo's U.S. Pat. No. 4,687,200 to control the position of objects on the screen. These were relatively simple yet effective user interfaces.
In recent years, video game system handheld controllers have tended to become increasingly more complicated and more capable. Video game platforms offered by Nintendo and others have provided joysticks, cross-switches or other user-manipulable controls as a means for allowing the user to control game play in a variety of simple and sophisticated ways. Many handheld controllers provide multiple joysticks as well an array of trigger buttons, additional control buttons, memory ports, and other features. Rumble or vibration effects are now common, as are wireless capabilities. Home video game manufacturers supply a variety of user input devices, and game accessory manufacturers often provide an even wider array of input device options. For example, some in the past have also tried to develop a video game handheld controller that senses the orientation of the handheld controller itself to control object position on the display. See U.S. Pat. No. 5,059,958 assigned to the present assignee.
Conventionally, a typical controller used for playing a game is a controller in which the main body of the controller is held by both hands of the user, and the keys are operated with the fingers of both hands. There is a problem, however, with a controller to be held by both hands because the hands are then restrained during operation, and thus, the user cannot do anything else, resulting in inconvenience.
One controller that addresses such a problem is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laying-open No. 2004-313492 [A63F 13/06]. The controller disclosed therein is a controller to be held by both hands that can be divided into right and left parts as necessary. In the divided state, the user holds only one part and performs an operation by means of only the keys arranged on the one part.
The controller described in the above-identified patent document is a controller to be held by both hands that is simply divided into two, and its keys are arranged under the assumption that the housing is supported by both hands from the right and left sides. Thus, the controller is not suitable for holding by one hand.
More specifically, the operating keys are arranged on the upper surface and side surfaces. The user operates the keys on the upper surface with thumbs and operates the keys on the side surfaces with index fingers and middle fingers, and needs to support the housing with ring fingers and little fingers against the pressure from the operating fingers. This causes a problem in that it is difficult to maintain the holding state with stability and hard to support the housing when no key operation needs to be performed and a finger is moved off the key.
However, configuring the controller so as to be operated by one hand brings about a decrease in the number of the keys, which imposes a limitation to a degree of flexibility in performing an input operation. In particular, these problems become more pronounced in a case of playing a game because the user is required to operate many buttons on the controller for manipulating a game character, and for selecting a command.
Another challenge that some have confronted in the past relates to cross-platform video game play. Generally, most video game system manufacturers differentiate new gaming systems from other or previous ones by providing unique user interface features including, for example, handheld controller configurations. Video games for play on different home video game platforms may therefore use different handheld controller configurations. While it may be possible in some cases to “remap” the user controls from one interface configuration to another so a game for one platform can be controlled using a different input control interface, such remapping may be less than optimal and/or change the game play experience in significant ways. For example, playing a game using a four-active-position cross-switch to control the movement of the main character on the screen may be quite a different experience for the user as compared with using an analog or digital joystick offering many different directional positions.
Furthermore, most video game platforms in the past have provided a single basic user interface that is used for all games playable on the platform. Even though different video games may provide quite different game play, video game developers have become skilled at using the common set of user input controls provided by the platform to control various different games. For example, most games developed to run on the Nintendo GameCube home video game system make use of the same handheld controller inputs comprising two joysticks, trigger switches and additional miscellaneous controls. Some games allocate different controls to different functions. For example, in one game, the left-hand joystick might navigate a 2D map view of a battlefield whereas in another game that same control might be used to allow the user to adjust virtual camera position or direction within a three-dimensional world.